On an Atlanta station, Coach Smith said what the Falcons would be trying do tonight againstFrisco was the same thing they've been trying to do for the last 10 weeks and that's improve the big plays...... He said a big Play was 20 yards or more!! He said the Falcons just haven't got it done for a number of reason's, and Frisco was near the top..... He finished off saying that every year the teams with the most 20+ yard plays were usually in the playoffs.

So he knows he need big plays; each will have to decide why the Falcons haven't got it done.

BTW--- Gruden said last week he counted 7 rookies starting for the Falcons. He said that's almost too many rookies starting to win in the NFL.

GRUDEN was complimentary on the Falcon rookies on defense; but just as down on Holmes; Konz who was benched tonight, and said in his opinion not getting McCLURE out of retirement was a big mistake. He thought McClure brought a toughness to the center of the line that is missing now.

Ryan up till half has had about his best game; not pressured as much, but still just one play over 20.

I guess by game 15 their are no more rookies. 15 straight games is much more than many of our reserves......

_________________"Everything Counts" Cyril

Last edited by Cyril on Tue Dec 24, 2013 2:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

I can't answer what I don't know, Matt does check down a lot, but he has too. Gruden talked about how much Ryan gets hits during a pass. They threw to Roddy for more than one twenty yard try; and I'm sure he's hoping some small stuff becomes big plays. I bet we haven't had one screen go twenty yards--maybe one.

I saw a special on Gruden and he's not your ordinary talking head.

He has a hotel rented and gets coffee at 3:30 and studies film about 6 hours 5 days a week. He calls it the "fired NFL Coaches club", he says anyone can join him but no body does......

Actually, they can do what's needed in that time for a deep shot. Think about it, there are multiple people at the combine who post 4.4 second forty times. By the time two seconds have elapsed, a QB could (and probably should) be launching his 40 yard ball. You have to wait another couple of seconds to hit a really deep pass, but 2 seconds is probably about right for a play action deep shot. The problem is, Ryan has not had 2 seconds on a consistent basis, and he certainly hasn't been able to step into many throws.

Again, my contention is that the real failing on the offensive line is the interior. If the interior could hold up better, the OT's could let speed rushing DE's run around them, and Ryan could, "step up into the pocket." The interior of the line simply gives up too much ground too quickly for that to happen. Though Holmes has been pretty bad, right guard is my biggest desire in the off season.

While I agree about the interior being blown up, it does not follow logic that because someone can run 40 yards in just over 4 seconds that they can run a 20 yard route in two seconds unless the route is just a dead streak and they are not impeded in any way at all at scrimmage. I think that the line played much better in SF than they have been and it may have been because they got tired of hearing how badly they were going to be abused by the 49ers, i.e., attitude. This team has played a finesse, soft style and need to get back to having some physicality like they did when Smitty first came on board. Get a decent run threat and the long balls will open up.

Stats say Ryan has received 2.6 seconds or more of 45% of his dropbacks.

He's only taken 3 sacks this year on plays where he has less than 2.5 seconds to throw and had the 4th highest completion percentage in league on such plays.

You guys keep trying to paint this picture that it is impossible for any offense to function behind our OL and its not true. Sure its impossible for our specific offense to function because our coaches are overly conservative, unimaginative, and bad at their jobs.

Keep trying, Pudge. You have a narrative you have all of a sudden decided upon--Smitty and Crew are too conservative on offense and from this all trouble trickles down--and it is nothing but myopia. I don't think it is all OL. We also have WRs who cannot get separation consistently. We have a sporadic run game--at best--which I do think is largely on the OLs inability to get consistent push or open holes but is also partially on an over rated and over the hill feature back. And what has happened to play action? Could it be no one respects the run enough to worry about it? What dif does it make if you have the 4th highest completion rate on plays when your passes are two yards or less? Ryan is pretty adept at avoiding sacks given the circumstances but now you have evolved from Ryan is playing like a pussy to Smitty is a pussy. It just isn't that simple and your unwillingness to accept the basic fact that any O or D pretty much starts with the line is off base, pally.

I'm not trying to say that the Falcons problems are solely on the coaching.

I'm the king of this team's problems are multi-faceted. But my point is that there are some people on this board that say that the team isn't winning and/or the offense isn't any good because of the lacking quality of the OL. And my point is that this OL is good enough that this team could be more productive than it is. Is it going to be on par with the Saints or Broncos? No. But it could certainly be capable of scoring more than 10-14 points a game, which it did for a 6-week period. And that is based on their ability to generate big plays. In the games where they generated big plays, (vs. TB twice, and vs. BUF) this offense scored points. In the games where they didn't, they were just 1 or 2 offensive scores, and the facts are that in this league, you're not going to win very many games if you don't score 20+ points. My beef is that the offense isn't even trying to generate big plays. That is a much bigger issue than the OL. The rhetoric on this message board is that the offense can't generate big plays because the OL isn't good enough. And if you watched the Bills game, and you watched other teams play, you would know that is simply not true. It just is factually wrong. It's instead that the offense won't generate big plays because they don't even try to.

Now does that mean that I'm saying that the problems from this team stem solely from the coaching? No. But first and foremost the problem is coaching. If you fix that, then you still have to deal with the fact that you have a QB that is too eager to check down and doesn't trust his arm enough to throw the ball into tight windows down the field. You still have to deal with an OL that is giving up too much pressure that is making it harder for said QB to have the space and room to step into the deep throws if/when they are available. And you have a team that has a bottom-rung rushing attack that can not reliably win on 1st & 2nd downs, and in short-yardage and goal line situations. You have a team that doesn't have the weapons on offense that can consistently win against quality competition. And you have a defense that cannot get pressure on the opposing quarterback, so unless our QB is perfect that opposing team is almost always going to win the QB duel, even when they are green backups (see Kirk Cousins & Mike Glennon). We don't generate hardly any turnovers, and we can't reliably stop the run.

But if you fix the coaching, some of those problems will go away because this team would find ways to compensate. Can't stop the run? Well that doesn't matter if you are up 14 points. So it should be your goal to go up 14 points every week. Your first 15 scripted plays should be designed to get as many scores as early as possible. Instead of playing the dink and dunk game. Do you know how many deep passes Matt RYan has attempted in the 1st quarter this year? 9. 5 of those came in the first 5 games.

Can't stop the opposing team? Doesn't matter if you can keep scoring points. This team should have basically tried to be the Saints of last year, which was a team that attacked downfield and tried to score as many points as possible. When you look at the 1 asset this team had post-Julio injury, it was Matt Ryan. Play to your strengths.

The point I've been stressing is that when Julio went down this team should have realized that they needed to try to win every game 34-31 or 31-28. That was the only way they would win games (and when you look at the results of the past 10 weeks, it's hard to argue against that point). But this coaching instead constructing game plans that seemed to be designed to win games 17-14, and there is just no way that was going to happen given our personnel.

The point of contention is that everyone here seems to be saying, "Well, Pudge they couldn't win games that way because the OL stunk and the team wasn't good enough." And my point is that how do we know that? They didn't even try. And the few times they did (Week 7 vs. TB and Week 13 vs. BUF), it seemed to work. An offense that was clicking because they were attacking down the field and successfully getting big chunks of yards. The OL did not play well at all vs. Buffalo, yet it didn't stop the team from putting up its best offensive performance of the season.

No body seems able to reconcile this, besides myself.

The point here is that everybody and their mama keeps saying, "The Falcons offense can't play well because of the OL." And my point is the Falcons offense won't play well because of the coaching. WE don't know what this offense can and can't do because the coaching staff has done a poor job trying to maximize what it has.

And when I bring up the point that this team needed to attack downfield, everyone says, "WEll we didn't have the WRs to do that." And you'd be right about that. But why is that? Who's fault is that? Is it the fault of the world, that the Falcons just happened to suffer injuries at WR at the one point in time where they were no good WRs to be had. Or was it because this coaching staff either didn't realize they needed to upgrade their WR position and/or when they did, they figured that Brian Robiskie was the right choice for the job?

Is that me being myopic and saying all the Falcons problems stem from the coaches? No. It's me saying that they start with the coaching. And IMO, if you have a coaching issue and a group that are consistently getting the minimum out of the players as the Falcons coaches have been this year, then it's not going to matter that the OL isn't any good or the other problems that are with the team, because those issues are only going to multipled and magnified by the fact that the coaches are in over their heads.

To summarize this 7,000 word essay, people need to understand the difference between "I can't do this" and "I won't do this." The Falcons problems are an "I won't" problem, not an "I can't" problem.

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